March 29: Nepal and India have renewed the electricity trade agreement between the two countries for three months. The agreement was supposed to be renewed for one year but India has been reluctance to do so. As a result, the India side extended the agreement only until June.

India has also reduced the quantity of electricity to be supplied to Nepal.

According to the Nepal Electricity Authority, it received India’s approval for renewing the agreement only on Wednesday night. Pradeep Kumar Thike, deputy executive director of the NEA, confirmed that the current agreement will last only up to June. By that time, there won’t be any problem to meet the electricity demand as it will be covered by Nepal's domestic production, says Thike.

According to him, Nepal will currently import 554 megawatts of electricity from India including 500 megawatts of electricity from Dhalkebar-Muzaffarpur transmission line and 54 megawatts from Tanakpur transmission line. According to the agreement, the electricity will be available only during the day time (from 6 am to 6 pm).

Earlier, imports were done 24 hours a day as per the requirement.

The NEA officials argue that there won’t be any problem due to the day-time supply of electricity to Nepal as the NEA has peaking plants and the weather has been favourable of late. “We have peaking plants and the weather is also favourable. About 150 megawatts of electricity has been added due to the recent rainfall, so there won’t be any problem,” said Thike.

Nepal has been exporting surplus electricity to India during the monsoon period when there is excess of electricity generated in the country. However, most of the electricity projects in Nepal as run-of-the-river type, the domestic production is not able to meet the demand during the dry season. Therefore, Nepal has been importing electricity from India during the dry season.

The NEA imports about 600 MW of electricity from India in winter. This is about one third of the demand. According to the authority, the peak hour demand has now reached 1,885 MW.